Jan Kjaerstad - The Seducer

And now, for the benefit of my non-Norwegian readers, a brief but necessary foray into Norwegian literature, to a novel by Alexander Kielland entitled Poison, a bitter denunciation of the late nineteenth-century grammar-school system and of mindless mechanical learning by rote: see another boy, a boy named Marius sitting in a geography class where he is being driven to despair by a teacher demanding of his pupils that they reel off the names of cities in Belgium, more cities in Belgium, more cities in Belgium …

Then see this boy, Jonas Wergeland, being handed a blank map of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, plotting in the cities according to his own sweet will: Brussels, Antwerp, Liège, Brugge. He knows it is alright if he puts them in the wrong places, it doesn’t matter, he’s creating the world. There’s only one thing wrong with this set-up: there are too few cities in Belgium and so Jonas has to come up with some other names. And since this is in fifth grade, his teacher does not say a word; instead she permits herself a little smile. And may they live forever, all those schoolmistresses who teach children to sing ‘Fagert er landet’ and smile at the things children will come up with and who do not try to correct anything, even when it involves a subject as touchy, in Norwegian terms, as cities in Belgium.

Then see this boy, a high-school student now, jogging along the corridor on the third floor of Oslo Cathedral School, past the main stairway, still no pupils, jogging on over to the metal ladder bolted to the left-hand wall, climbing the ladder, pushing open a hatch in the ceiling and coming up into the dark and dirty attic, where he locates and opens another hatch or rather a skylight this time, and clambers out onto the roof which, to his relief, is flat.

Jonas shoots a glance at the green, verdigrised onion dome across from him, surprised by how different everything looks from this angle, before cautiously wriggling over to a thick cable running from this roof to the roof of the old rectory. He opens his rucksack and pulls out another flag which, by dint of a nifty homemade pulley contraption, he manages to run out onto the cable, bringing the flag to a halt at the lowest point, where it hangs fluttering directly above the schoolyard.

There it hung, high in the sky, suspended in midair: the flag of a foreign country, green, with a white crescent moon and four stars. I have not yet said which flag it was. I dare say that very few people would be able to identify it anyway, and even fewer back then, since it had only been in use for a few years and was not officially adopted until the end of the seventies. Jonas regarded the length of bunting, feeling, in fact, rather solemn, the way he did when the Olympic medals were presented. He ventured a wary peek over the edge. More and more pupils were streaming through the gates into the schoolyard, and they all spotted it, stopped and pointed, baffled, as if the flag were some tropical bird, an impossibility. The rector, too, had come out, stood with his hands at his sides, peering up into the air. Jonas almost felt sorry for him. The rector was easily riled.

One aspect of Jonas Wergeland’s life that is rarely touched on concerns his attitude towards the great existential question: What to do? And here I am thinking, as the phrase suggests, along political lines: of the exceedingly banal, yet exceedingly complex question as to what, as an individual, one can do to make the world — neither more nor less than that — a better, a more just place. In due course Jonas would celebrate both Grotius Day and Michelangelo Day with great pomp and ceremony, but during his time at high school, as with so many others, this huge question could still fill him with an almost abstract lethargy, bordering on loathing. Then suddenly one day he shook off his almost normal and necessary apathy, looked this mind-boggling challenge straight in the eye and, from a wealth of options, chose as his cause the Comoro Islands, that tiny island kingdom in the Indian Ocean, north of Madagascar; more as a symbol of his willingness to lend a helping hand, naturally; as a sort of sop to his self-respect rather than out of any illusion that he could be of real help. And it has to be said to Jonas Wergeland’s credit that he chose a country and a cause that very few people cared about. I would go so far as to say that Jonas Wergeland was the only person in Norway around 1970 to speak up for the Comoro Islands, this being a time when, of all the conflicts big and small being waged throughout the world, the people of Norway concentrated — to all intents and purposes — all visible opposition on two things: the EEC and the war in Vietnam.

So it was the Comorian flag that Jonas had unfurled for the edification of his schoolfellows and anyone else who happened to be walking along Ullevålsveien that morning. In those days, as I am sure many readers will remember, the actual idea of hoisting a flag was nothing new, but the flag of the Comoro Islands was hoisted in only one school in Norway or in the whole of Europe, come to that: Oslo Cathedral School. So from that point of view — considering the school’s reputation as the Alma Mater of original thinkers — one might say that the rector had no real reason to be as upset or as enraged as he actually was.

I realize that some of you are growing impatient, but here’s the point: how did Jonas Wergeland learn about the Comoro Islands?

It all started on a train: on the Oslo-Bergen line to be precise. From the minute the train pulled out of the station Jonas had been gazing at the man sitting diagonally opposite him — and who could blame him? The man was a Negro. That’s right, a Negro in Norway. Now I use the word ‘Negro’ and not ‘black’ or ‘African’ simply because the word used in Norway at this time by everybody, even the socialists, was neger : literally ‘Negro’ or, I am afraid, ‘nigger’. There were not many Negroes to be found in Norway in the late sixties and this particular Negro was, what is more, clad in the most peculiar, not to say downright comical, outfit. The real eye-catcher was a brand-new, gaudily patterned sweater of the sort sold in the souvenir shops attached to the big hotels; and even though it was only the beginning of November and not especially cold, on his head he wore an enormous fur hat, the sort commonly referred to in Norway as a bjørnefitte — literally a ‘bear twat’ — with the ear flaps hanging down.

Jonas could not take his eyes off this man, who had spent the whole time staring curiously or wonderingly, one might almost say ‘goggle-eyed’, out of the carriage window, the sort of window that cannot possibly be opened, never mind the fact that there was a sign warning passengers not to lean out of it. But Jonas was sure that if the window had been open, the Negro would have been leaning out of it; it seemed as if he just could not get enough of the sights he was seeing through the window, he had hardly so much as glanced around the compartment, not even when the refreshments trolley came past, with its bitter coffee and rubbery cheese slices which, by the way, I believe should be sampled by anyone who wishes to learn something about Norwegians, about their high cost of living and their astonishing eating habits: food that defies all comparison — this railway fare, at any rate — unless it be with the character-building meals consumed in ancient Sparta.

The train was halfway between Hønefoss and Nesbyen, and the man was still staring out of the window, looking possibly even more dumbfounded than before, well-nigh enraptured — staring out at the pine forest. Jonas had never seen anyone gaze in such wonder at a pine forest. It was as though the man found it impossible to take in the mass of pine trunks, and Jonas even began to feel a little bit proud of the Norwegian forests, of the fact that pine and fir trees could fill a Negro with such awe. Jonas fancied that the man must be sitting there lost in thoughts of Viking ships and stave churches and the like as the train chugged on through the pine trees. Eventually, the Negro began to shake his head, slowly, again and again, before finally murmuring something that Jonas had to strain to catch: ‘Even the woods are safe here.’ The Negro went on shaking his head, smiling incredulously at the wall of trees and softly repeated: ‘Yeah, even the woods are safe here.’